One residence - Villa Marco Polo, and 14 young reporters.
As Ella Maillart, they're about to leave celestial mounts to reach red sands...
But before so they joing altogether up in Albertville (Alps) to confirm their projects, speak about them, evaluate, try things... So great to feel the adrenaline fly between them. They're already well seasoned but they get the opportunity this week-end to try their tools with professional people.
Film directors will be given pieces of advice by directors Marianne Chaud and Véronique Lapied. It's a workshop, they need to practice: Albertville people play the game, becoming heroes of "3 mn exercices". Such great portraits, visual effects, emotionnal pictures and words, huge talent.
Dorothée Lasne and Béatrice Roman-Amat will realise an editorial project. They'll practice interview and restoration too. I can share my experience with the editorial world, the collaboration between author and illustrator. (To sum-up, here's a little drawing to explain our job to children made by la Charte - children books authors organization.)
Dorothée follows her instinct through a vegetal artist's studio. She'll bring poetic pictures, a delightful portrait of the painter, covering her diaporama without parachute ! We discover in her eyes the richness of the albertvillese artist and the first steps of a traveller artist. Her camera reveals us her great ability to tell pictures. She'll harvest wonderful moments shared with women farmers of South-Eastern Asia.
Béatrice will realise a children book about a young boy in India, making him travel with her. To practice she's got an appointment with a greek artist called Eva Gramm. Béatrice works as a journalist and doesn't forget any detail. The great deal is when she makes a 8 years old boy's words story out of it ! She even imagine poetic illustrations and I paint them in my sketchbook :
Between workshops there are lectures. A bit of video, reporting, production, restoration... And of course communication.
Aurélie Croiziers and Fabrice du Grand Bivouac explain how important it is to create a 2.0 identity.
Actually the 14 projects are so great, we want to follow them on the web. Blogs and tutti cuanti internet tools are just perfect for that. Thanks to her blog full of far-away-horizons (above all her long stay in China), Aurélie gets several nice experiences about travelling. Her blog is just like her, fascinating and generous. A ray of sunlight.
"If beauty is in the watcher's eye, the trip is in the traveller's spirit..."
This week-end is in the turmoil at the Grand Bivouac.
First there's the Popular university on Friday night. We share a buffet with reporters and festival volunteers, then we listen to Olivier Weber's lecture, a great reporter who just landed from Irak. He thanks his "older brothers" Nicolas Bouvier, Jack London, Hemingway... When I was in Yemen I used to read "Pearl fishers" by Albert Londres and "Squared fortune" by Joseph Kessel. Amazing to see that the country didn't change at all.
He tells us about journalists, simple people, close to social reality, no guerilleros. Juggling with cynism and ingenousness. Objective, avoiding the worse censorship: self-censorhip.
The day after he gave a lecture at the Villa Marco Polo. He spoke about the professionnal risks, the hostages in Syria: they were freed one week after, 300 detention days. "A journalist must be able to do everything: Travel agency, security, telecom, stay awake twenty-three hours without eating to transmit perfectly." He insists in people's security, above all the ones who testify in reports.
"We must be critical, check on every piece of information and defend universal values.
Tomorrow at dawn, at the hour when the mountain whitens, I will set out (Victor Hugo adaptation)
Well, the one who has come inside the Villa Marco Polo doesn't want to step out !
The energetic wave is still on in the train with three residents: Estelle (her project will change our idea of love from Buenos Aires), Jade (she'll show us who's hiding behind our coffee cup from the Andes), Anne-Laure (she'll make us think about development, taking Brazil as a world wide sample...)
The day after back to Lyon, I'm still addicted to the energy, spending three hours speaking with Laura about her project with Alice for a responsible Burma.
When we said good bye in the street, I wanted to take my backpack back on! Guess who just arrived: the gypsies school truck ! Hey, we'll be soon back on the road, going to teach at the Saintes Maries de la mer pilgrimage.
Here some of the heroes of the Villa Marco Polo! A big thank you to Guy, Bruno, Fabrice, Eric and Emilie of the Grand Bivouac for their warm welcome.
To follow the projects: Villa Marco Polo
To try to get in the next session: http://www.grandbivouac.com/inscription/
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